


Before the Fall

by ABeckoningCat



Category: Alien: Covenant
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-10
Updated: 2017-09-10
Packaged: 2018-12-26 06:45:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12053505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ABeckoningCat/pseuds/ABeckoningCat
Summary: Daniels encounters what appears to be an ailing Walter in the days before the crew settles in for their long sleep.





	Before the Fall

Twice someone sneezed on the far side of the cargo hold, and twice Daniels called out a distracted, “ _ Bless you _ ,” with no reply.

Maybe they didn’t hear her, or maybe she didn’t hear  _ them _ over the zip of the ratchet as she battened down the last of the air compressors, but by the third echoing sneeze her curiosity was piqued enough to investigate.

It wasn’t Jake.  She knew her husband’s sneeze very well -- dry and spastically cough-like -- and this was a far more robust specimen, as from someone who had a knack for it.  Ledward was a likely candidate, or another of Lope’s team.  It could have passed for a soldier’s sneeze.

She didn’t announce herself, maintaining a keen ear to the softly reverberant sniffles echoing through the silent, monolithic machines, the sleeping giants that would one day, many years from now, be the foundations of their distant home.  Daniels had never been a tiny woman, always tall and narrow as a sailboat, but she liked the feeling of being dwarfed here.  Of being small among things so imposingly large, especially in a space so vast.

She would miss that, when it was all broken down;  when there were no more places to secrete herself away from the constant, exhausting  _ beingness _ of other people.  No more quiet recesses, no more comfortable silences, no more places to be speechless and small.

Perhaps that was why she kept coming back here, finding excuses to check and recheck the equipment, long after it had ceased to be truly necessary.  Soon enough this would all be gone, both the equipment and the spaces between.

For a mission so steeped in the notion of discovery, every single step of the way felt burdened by loss.

Danny squeezed between the treads of two earth-movers, inching into the narrow alley between terraforming modules, and there saw her culprit.  Nothing could have surprised her more.

“...Walter?”

The mission’s synthetic stood in the shelter of one of the raised excavators, tablet in one hand and pen light in the other, shining a thin blue beam at the undercarriage.  His head turned to the sound of his name, expression shifting in that subtle but perceptible way that Jake kept calling  _ smitten _ .

“He isn’t smitten,” she’d argued.  Her husband remained sublime with amusement.

“He’s got a crush on you.”

“I don’t even think that’s possible.”

“Sure it is.  I’ve been around the block, I know puppy love when I  see it.  I had to wait long enough to see it on  _ your _ face, didn’t I?”

Poor Jake.  Poor Jake and poor Walter, who will probably have to suffer her husband’s subtle, companionable teasing for the rest of their lives.  Thank God he hadn’t caught on to it yet.

“Daniels,” he greeted her, always calm, always even, always in that heavy, well-modulated voice.  In a previous life he’d been one of those recordings that tells you you’ve dialed the wrong number.  She prowled sidelong to have a look at what he was doing, and his head turned delicately to follow her.

“So… that was you I heard?”

He lowered the pen light, brow gathered.

“I beg your pardon?”

Her arms folded, eyes coming back to him.  “I heard you sneezing.”

“Impossible,” he said calmly. “I don’t sneeze”

She took just a moment, looking at him more shrewdly, with a small,  _ you’re-putting-me-on _ smirk, then pressed, “I know what I heard.”

Walter looked back to his work, dancing the thin blue beam along the excavator’s mechanical intestines.

“I can’t lie, either,” he reminded her.

Now Danny smiled, sidling in next to him, slipping around to his other side as she too studied his work.  He was looking for leaks in the hydraulic system, hoping to tease a telltale phosphorescent glow out with the beam.  It was easier work for two people -- one to pump the hydraulics from the cab and one to find the leak -- but for some reason he was trying to do it himself.  For some reason he wanted to be alone.

Maybe Walter wasn’t the only one who was a tiny bit smitten.

“You can’t lie,” she allowed.  “But you can evade the truth.  I’ve heard you do it before.  Give me that.”

Walter let her take the light from his hand, quietly baffled.

“Have I?”

Danny feigned complete absorption with her search, ducking down to lance the beam higher up into its recessed guts.

“When Farris asked if you liked that… green chili dish she made for dinner.”

His eyes averted again, absorbing that. “Hm.”

“You said…  _ it’s obvious the time and care you put into its preparation _ .”  She looked at him quickly, wholly amused.  “It was terrible.”

“It was not a pleasant experience.”  He took back the light, arguing calmly, “But that was not a lie.”

“Nope.  It was an evasion of the truth.”  She looked at him and he looked back, until at last Danny jerked her chin up to indicate the monstrosity suspended over their heads.  “You’ll get this done faster with somebody in the cab.  Stay here, OK?”

“Thank you.”

Daniels swung around, hoisting herself into the rig’s elevated cab in a hand-over-hand climb.  She held the door open with one boot, keying on the interior lights, then pumped the hydraulic pedal with a few heavy thrusts of her other leg.

“See anything?” she called.

“One moment.  ...yes, I see it now.  There’s a stress fracture in the Y-coupling.  It will need to be sealed.”

She flicked the key back to the off position, letting the cabin lights fall dim again as she inched to the edge of the seat and took the steep jump down.

The heavy slap of her boots coincided with another powerful sneeze from under the rig.

Danny leaned into view, but was only quick enough to catch Walter’s soft sigh as he straightened from a hard twist to one side, wrist still raised to his nose.  He looked at her guiltily, and her smile beamed bright enough to fluoresce a hydraulic leak.

“Bless you.”

He tried to sound chastening.  “That wasn’t a sneeze.”

“Bullshit,” she laughed, trailing down the length of the rig and reaching overhead for its gear box.  It was too far above her head to see what she was groping for, but by touch alone she managed to feel out the shape of a spot welder and a pair of goggles.  Despite her usually deft touch, it kept slipping out of her fingers..  “Explain to me why that wasn’t a sneeze.”

“Because.”  He was mild.  “I don’t sneeze.”

“Except when you do.”

Walter was only a hair taller, but longer in the arms, and he dipped a hand into the gearbox to retrieve the welder for her.  She took it, still too high from being right to bother minding.

“Sneezing is a uniquely organic physiological function,” he said.

Danny stood toe to toe with him, pert and expectant.

“Then what was that?”

“That was a…” He stopped, visibly troubled, as if trying to work out an answer that was more  _ evasive _ than  _ dishonest _ .  Her brows crept upward and her close-lipped smile inched wider for every second he hesitated.

“Mm?”

“It was…”  No, it wasn’t coming to him.  Although something else was.

This time Danny got to see it for herself: the flicker of hazy frustration in his normally gentle, focused eyes; the part of his lips that usually bespoke a thought he wasn’t certain he should voice; the blatant flare of nostrils that was absolutely impossible not to notice before he hid his face desperately against the junction of his arm.

The sneeze bent him like a reed, his posture relaxing afterward with a small sigh of defeat.  He flicked her another quick glance from the corners of his eyes.

“Excuse me.”

She looked perfectly puzzled. “For what?”

Her smile broke quickly, bemused, as she ducked past him and into the shadow of the rig.  Walter stood a moment, head turned to watch her, before silently following.

Despite her height, Daniels used every advantage of her other otherwise long, wiry build to fit into the spaces some larger engineers couldn’t go.  Where Walter had to bunch his shoulders and tuck his head at an uncomfortable angle to inspect the guts of the hydraulic system, Danny origamied herself neatly into place, far more maneuverable than the larger, broader synthetic.  While she slipped on her goggles and adjusted the beam of the welder, he unhooked a service light from the fittings overhead and shone it more squarely on her work.

As she bent in to seal the crack, she asked, “So can I ask why you’re sneezing?  And why you’re trying to play it off like you aren’t?”

Composed though he may have seemed to the rest of the crew, around Daniels Walter’s eyes had a way of revealing far more of his inner machinations than he probably realized.  The ability to appear emotionally unflappable was a nice trick to have in his arsenal, but only when it actually worked.

“It’s a virus,” he said.  She looked back briefly, eyes distorted behind the lenses, then frowned again at her work.

“Can you get those?  You’re not  _ that _ close to a flesh-and-blood human that you can get sick from us, are you?”

“Fortunately not. “  His gaze ricocheted back and forth between the bright, crackling tip of the welder and  her face in profile.  “It’s a… feature, if you will, indicative of a problem somewhere in my system that requires attention.  My firmware may need an update, or I may have a minor hardware repair that needs to be dealt with that isn’t immediately apparent.”

Daniels stepped back, moving the goggles to the top of her head and blowing softly on the cooling seam.   
“So it makes you sneeze?”

The far corners of his mouth softened with the smallest and most subtle of smiles.

“Rather, it mimics the symptoms of a steadily worsening cold.  Sneezing first, followed by a sense of congestion and sinus pressure.  The individual symptoms will get progressively worse the longer I avoid addressing the underlying issue.”

She’d turned to face him by now, expression struck with sympathetic disbelief.

“That sounds  _ awful _ .”

He made a soft sound in his throat, still faintly smiling. “It isn’t pleasant.  Which is precisely the point.”  One hand reached out, relieving her of the welder.  “All the more incentive to fix the problem as quickly as possible.  In my case, I’m largely responsible for my own ongoing maintenance.  With our journey so close at hand, and much still to put in order, I haven’t yet had time to run a thorough diagnostic.  If I’d been created to be a personal companion, it would be an incentive for my owner to have me serviced sooner rather than later.”  His smile widened by a single, measured degree.  “Nobody likes a sneezing synthetic.”

Daniels felt a little pang of sympathy, not merely for the predicament in which he found himself, but for the larger problem that she suspected was underlying -- and at the heart of why he was here, instead of with the rest of the crew.  Her bottom lip tucked in slightly, mouth downturned as she pulled the goggles from her head.

“ _ I _ might like a sneezing synthetic.”

He took the goggles as well, distancing himself just enough to replace everything in the gear box.

“I’m sure it would get tiring.”

Danny’s arms folded, gaze assessing.

“Was Upworth being bitchy to you again?”

He clicked the lid softly shut, looking at her so gently that for a moment Daniels felt guilty for the way her stomach fluttered.  Oh, that wasn’t good… she definitely shouldn’t be feeling that.

“Upworth can be… unkind.”

“Bitchy,” she corrected.  She liked the word, liked the bite of it and the way people shocked when she wielded it like a little stiletto.  Except Walter.  Walter never looked shocked by much of anything.

“I’ll leave that distinction to you,” he said, closing the distance between them again.  Toe to toe.  Jake was precisely her height, and for several seconds she just stood there, enjoying the sensation of looking  _ up _ at him.

“How do you feel,” Danny asked quietly, arms relaxing to her sides.  Walter parted his lips to speak, eyes slipping sideways as he considered his answer.  When he finally replied, he looked at her directly.

“Unwell.”

There went her stomach again.  Her heart and her stomach.

“Is there anything I can do to help?”

That smile once more, small and measured and almost methodical.  Daniels understood with sudden, guilty clarity what Jake meant when he said the android was  _ smitten _ .

“I’m afraid the symptoms will continue to worsen until I complete a diagnostic and address whatever maintenance is necessary.  To that end--”

“I can help.”  When he stood straighter with surprise, she added, “I don’t know  _ much _ about how you work, but I should probably learn, right?  What if you can’t perform your own repairs, some day?  Somebody in the main crew should know  _ something _ , at least.  Can you walk me through it?”

His eyes studied her back and forth, back and forth, turquoise blue in the hold’s cold, colorless gloom.

“I believe I can.”

“Good.”  Her smile returned, believably casual, and she reached out to notch the zipper of his jumpsuit just a little bit higher.  Walter’s chin tucked down, visibly surprised, and the eyes he gave her were baffled and studying.  An unspoken  _ Who  _ **_are_ ** _ you?   _ Perhaps she was the only one here capable of surprising him.

“Your place or mine,” he asked, and Daniels’s smile wavered.  She, too, could be surprised.

“W… what?”

“For the repairs,” he clarified.  “I have the necessary equipment in my own quarters, but it can be relocated if you’re more comfortable working in--”’

“ _ Oh _ . Let’s… your place.  Jake is sleeping.”

“Very well.”  An arm extended, a silent encouragement back between the sleeping monoliths.  His eyes never left her, and seemed never to blink.  “Shall we go?”


End file.
